


A Squire's Odyssey

by FullmetalArchivist (1stTimeCaller)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Academy times, But he's still a guy y'know?, F/M, Fort Briggs, Friendship/Love, Havoc is a good guy, Pining, Pre-Canon, Some Humor, Some feels, he's trying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 19:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15692145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1stTimeCaller/pseuds/FullmetalArchivist
Summary: Jean Havoc's decision to join the army was pretty simple. But the circumstances that changed him from Squire to Knight were... decidedly less simple.





	A Squire's Odyssey

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this half-finished in my drafts for months, under the title "Cheer Up Sleepy Jean" Because I think I'm hilarious.
> 
> This is a ~15,000 word headcanon based off of like 2 throwaway lines by Olivier Armstrong in Brotherhood. Please enjoy.

* * *

 

 _I fucking hate it here_ , thought Jean Havoc.

He hasn’t been off the train for more than five minutes, but even surrounded by the warmth of his shuffling peers, the cold bites his face and makes his eyes water. Why couldn’t he have been selected for training in Southern Headquarters, like Breda? The bastard is probably getting a tan, and an eyeful of civilian girls in skimpy clothes passing the barracks.

It’s been six months since he was accepted into the military. He can already see the difference in his shape, not that he felt he was anything to sniff at before. But his arms are definitely bigger and he can outrun most of his classmates, even though they still give him shit for smoking. Half-way through their first semester, cadets are sent to experience 'joint-training exercises', but it's less like the refresher courses that the ranked soldiers perform and more like a field-trip that teaches new skills, namely shooting. He’s done drill after agonizing drill, and now he _finally_ gets to play with some guns. And they bring him to this freezing hell-hole to do it.

He can’t see two feet in front of him as the snow whips past him horizontally, weaving between him and his classmates as they clutch their arms and walk forcefully towards the station’s shelter. He curses under his breath — he wanted a smoke but he absolutely cannot stay out here longer than necessary — and follows the rows of people in anoraks and furs through the shelter. When they are inside, they get in formation, line-by-line, and he looks around for some familiar faces.

Everyone here is from the East, in their first year of training, and since the Academy is split up into different sectors, there are plenty of people here that he hasn’t met. But he sees some people that look vaguely familiar, like the guy with the long black hair whose name completely escapes him right now. He can spot Aiden a few rows in front of him too. He and Aiden hung out on the train here, although Aiden is more Breda’s friend than his, so it was kind of awkward to try make conversation without their mutual friend there to mediate. They mostly just bitched about their bad luck that they were sent North instead of South, or Central, or literally anywhere else.

Everyone salutes dutifully when the Colonel arrives. She isn’t wrapped up in nearly as much as they are but if she does feel the cold, she doesn’t show it. Havoc decides that she’s an absolute fox, until she begins speaking, after which he decides she’s an absolute bitch. He thought his instructor in East was intense, but this woman makes him seem like a kitten. She shouts about survival and strength of will and _blah blah blah_ , Havoc resists the urge to roll his eyes, feeling like she would probably be able to sense the insubordination from a mile away.

She weaves through the row of soldiers, yelling about how she should be up defending Briggs instead of stuck here with these runts, and Havoc can feel himself straighten and freeze up as she passes him. It’s not that he’s scared of her per se, but he doesn’t need the extra headache. When the guy beside him sneezes and she screams in his face for a good two minutes, Havoc looks straight ahead and reminds himself that _he’s not scared of her, he’s not scared of her, he’s not scared of her_.

When she finally releases them, they begin to shuffle out of the station, following some of the officers back into the blistering cold. As they walk, someone knocks into him and he almost loses his footing on the ice beneath his feet.

“Hey, watch it!” he calls out angrily once he regains his balance, but the trainee soldier is already walking ahead of him and out of sight. He’s smaller than the boys surrounding him, and Havoc thought he saw short blonde hair when he looked back, but now all he sees is the back of the kid’s hood. Havoc lights a cigarette, muttering to himself grumpily.

_I fucking hate it here._

 

* * *

 

He enters the warehouse that they’ve been told is their sleeping quarters for the next week, and it’s barely warmer than it was outside. They have an hour before lights out and the officers leave with a warning to them not to be too rowdy. Havoc looks around at the rows of bunk-beds, the trough with taps that he assumes they’ll be using to clean up and the curtained walls at the back, which he imagines probably hides a row of toilets. The ceilings are really high and the beds are dressed in dark-green sheets that look altogether too thin considering where they are. There are people here already, all around his age, and he supposes that they’re all the trainees from the South, West and Central. The North kids that weren’t sent away were likely in their dorms.

Finally, being allowed to relax and move out of formation, everyone started to gravitate towards their friends, standing around and chatting. Havoc decides he doesn’t want to find Aiden, that he’s tired and cold and just wants to know where he’ll be sleeping tonight. He walks among some rows of beds, seeing names at the foot of each bed and realizing that they’re in alphabetical order.

He eventually slows when he gets to the end of row G, knowing he’ll probably be at the very beginning of the ‘H’ section. He stops at an empty bunk-bed with two names on it. On the top is his name, “HAVOC”, and beneath it is another, “HAWKEYE”. He surmises that his name at the top means he has dibs on the top bunk, so he climbs up the wooden ladder until he is sat on his bed with his bag in his lap. He rifles through the duffel bag, taking out his pajamas and a packet of biscuits his mom sent him last time she wrote.

Taking off his coat and shirt, he decides to leave his undershirt on, already feeling the cold seeping into his bones. He shivers, finding his sleep shirt and quickly putting it on. As his head pops through the collar, he sees the top of a head near the foot of his bed.

“Oh hey, are you my bunk-mate?” he asks, scrambling to the edge of the bed to look down at the kid. He sees the short blonde hair at the top of his head once he removes his hood, but can’t make anything else out. He briefly wonders if it is the same kid who rammed into him earlier, but decides to drop it. It was probably an honest mistake, even if the guy didn’t apologize.

“Yeah,” the boy practically whispers, before climbing into his bed beneath Havoc.

Havoc reckons the boy might be shy, or afraid. This is the first time they’ve been moved to a different part of the country for training. He remembered the first day of training, how half his classmates looked like they were going to cry, missing their home. Not him though, he loves his mom but he couldn’t wait to get out into the world and meet new people. He had lived in a small town and had too much energy and enthusiasm to want to waste it there.

If the kid is afraid, Havoc reckons he can help. He’s got a certain charm with people. He hangs his body out the side of the bed, looking at the upside-down image of the bed beneath him.

“Jean Havoc. I don’t snore, so consider yourself lucky.”

The boy is out of his coat by now but facing away from him as he moves beneath the covers, still fully clothed. He doesn’t say anything in response. Havoc frowns.

“You know, this is the part where you say your name,” he complains as the boy shuffles underneath the covers, hands returning with a shirt. He continues to change under the covers ( _must be shy,_ Jean thinks) and doesn’t turn around when he answers softly.

“It’s Hawkeye. You already said it.”

Havoc harrumphs at the answer. _Not shy then_ , he thinks. _Just a shithead_. His voice is a little high, and Havoc wonders if he’s a late bloomer. He swings his torso back up to his own bed, twisting to hang down the other side since the boy clearly isn’t turning around to talk to him.

“I meant your first name, you little—” the rest of his sentence dies in his throat when he drops his torso and sees a pair of amber eyes staring up at him through distinctly feminine lashes.

 _That’s not a boy_.

“Oh, um…” he stammers. When Havoc decided to talk to him — no, _her —_ because he had a certain charm with people, he didn’t mean _girls_. Havoc has absolutely no game when it comes to girls. “I didn’t know you were…”

“Riza,” she says, glaring at him.

“Huh?”

“My first name.”

“Oh. Right.” He continues to stare at the girl — Riza — wondering if she can sense the discomfort in his voice. She has big brown eyes and short blonde hair and the tip of her nose is pink with the cold, her cheeks even pinker. He hasn’t met a girl cadet before. And she’s not just a girl cadet.

She’s a _cute_ girl cadet.

She continues to glare at him and he realizes that he probably looks ridiculous — upside-down, mouth agape, eyes wide — so he quickly gets back onto his own bed, crawling under the covers and burning a hole in the ceiling with his stare.

“So, are you from Eastern?” He’s probably a little too loud, but the rest of the trainees are still talking in groups of twos and threes, so it would be only her who noticed. Her responding “yes” is much quieter.

“Me too. I, uh. I haven’t seen you around.” There’s a tremor in his voice that he wills to go away, because it’s making him sound like a moron.

“It’s a big academy.”

He chuckles nervously. “Yeah, I guess.”

There’s a long, awkward silence, and he’s tempted to wait until she says something, contributes in some way. When it becomes clear that she isn't going to speak up, he clears his throat awkwardly.

“So… um… Your family from the city too or are you a country girl?”

“Goodnight, Cadet Havoc.”

It isn’t even lights-out yet.

 _Great_ , thinks Havoc, flushing with embarrassment. _I meet two hot blondes in one day and they’re both bitches._

 

* * *

 

Havoc isn’t a light sleeper by any measure, but something wakes him up in the middle of the night. He blinks a few times, before realizing that his eyes don’t need to adjust, it’s just really dark. He hears the sound of snores coming from a few beds over. He assumes that this is what wakes him, but before he can try to get back to sleep, another noise cuts through the volume. It sounds like a whimper. The sound is quickly followed by a scratching that makes a shudder run through his body.

When the scratching continues, followed by another tiny whimper, he sits up, looking around for the source of the noise. It takes him a moment to notice that his bed is shaking ever so slightly.

Remembering that he is on a bunk, he carefully lowers his upper half to hang on the bed, checking below him.

He can barely see, but the girl he spoke to earlier is lying down, facing away from him, with her hand over her shoulder, nails scratching at her back.

“Hey. Hawkeye.”

Another whimper is the only answer he gets. He climbs out of the bed, trying to make as little noise as possible as he drops to the floor and kneels beside her bed.

“Hawkeye, c’mon. Wake up,” he whispers, jiggling the mattress in an attempt to wake her.

She starts scratching more frantically, and his hand shoots up to grab her wrist. The back of his hand brushes up against her back, and he feels that it is slightly wet from sweat. He hears her sharp intake of breath and suddenly she twists around. He lets go of her wrist before he accidentally breaks it behind her back, and even in the dark he can see the shining whites of her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she snaps. His eyes widen at the surprising volume and his hands shoot up in a gesture of surrender.

“Shh, shush! Relax, okay?” he whispers. “You were crying out in your sleep.”

Her eyes are still fire but her mouth closes up, a look of uncertainty cutting through the anger. When she suddenly flinches, he figures that she’s probably now just noticing the pain in her back.

“You were destroying your back, too. Are you hurt?”

She glares at him, and he suddenly feels ice in his chest that can’t be completely attributed to the Northern climate. “I’m fine,” she says indignantly.

Havoc looks down at the hand that had pried her wrist from her back. It is stained with something dark, and he realizes that when he touched her back, it wasn’t sweat he felt against his hand.

“Jesus, you’re _bleeding_.”

“I’m fine,” she repeats, bringing the covers over herself again.

Havoc suppresses the urge to call her a snotty brat. Instead, he returns her glare with one of his own, although he would bet that he doesn’t look nearly as scary as she does. He stands up and grabs his bag, taking out his canteen of water and a washcloth. He pours water onto the cloth, some dripping on the floor. He practically shoves the rag in her face.

“Here. I’m not going to listen to you whine tomorrow when your shirt is frozen onto your stupid back!” he says, losing some control over the cadence of his voice. When she doesn’t reach out to take the cloth, he drops it onto the pillow beside her before picking his bag back up and climbing back onto his bed.

He lies there for minutes, huffing and stewing in anger. _I was only trying to help._ He feels too annoyed to think about sleeping again, his blood pumping with frustration at the girl below him.

After a few minutes though, he hears very light shuffling below him, followed by a small hiss of pain, and his anger turns back to concern. The girl is obviously crazy, but that was some hell of a dream if it had her mutilating herself. He wonders what she dreamed about. He hopes she doesn’t do this to herself often.

“Thank you.”

He barely hears the words. He doesn’t respond, deciding to feign being asleep, hoping that she doesn’t think he’s awake because he _cares_ or anything stupid.

Still, he calms down enough to sleep for real shortly after.

 

* * *

 

The drills feel a million times harder in the cold.

They’re the same ones he did at the academy, but now the sweat cools to ice crystals on his skin so he’s too hot and too cold at the same time. He’s pretty unhappy that they have him doing regular drills anyway. Isn’t he supposed to be here to learn how to handle a gun?

He finishes before any of the other guys in his division, and his instructor rewards him by letting him go to lunch early. Before he gets to the mess hall, though, he decides to change his clothes.

When he enters the warehouse-slash-dorm, he initially thinks he’s the only one there. As he stomps to his bed, loosening the snow from his boots with every step, he hears a tiny yelp, and his head snaps around to the source of the noise.

Standing by the trough-style sinks is his bunk-mate, quickly rolling her shirt back down her stomach.

He gulps.

He only caught the briefest glance, but _damn_. Girl’s got _abs_. He thinks he may have seen the bottom of her bra as well, but he can’t be sure. Her shirt is back on but he can’t stop himself from staring at where it wasn’t for a bit, as if his stare alone could roll it back up for another peek.

“Is it lunchtime?” Her voice is decidedly more feminine than the few words he’s heard from her so far.

His neck snaps up, guiding his head to look her in the eyes. “Not yet, I just finished drills early.”

She looks like she wants to kill him, but for a fraction of a second, her eyes flash with something else. He quickly realizes that she’s impressed. He quite likes the thought that he’s managed to impress a lady.

“How come you're not training still?” he asks.

“I finished early too.”

He grins at her. “Damn, you must be in good shape.” His eyes dart back down to her stomach. _She_ is _in good shape_.

Shaking the thought out of his head, he clears his throat. “So, what are you doing?” Stupid question, really. He’s not surprised when she doesn’t answer. He takes a few steps towards her.

“It must be real weird to be the only girl here. If you want…” he hesitates, trying to make sure that his next words don’t sound like a proposition. “I can cover you. I mean... like obscure you? Facing away! That way if anyone else comes in…”

He can feel her consider him, as if he’s being sized up. Her jaw looks stiff and she’s definitely not giving off a friendly vibe. Not that she has since he met her, he supposes.

Then her hands go back to the hem of her shirt and she mutters a “thanks” before pulling her shirt up again.

His eyes go huge and he spins around before she manages to get the shirt completely off. This time, he knows for sure that he saw her bra. It was a black sports bra; definitely not scandalous or revealing, but _still_ . You’d think she would have at least turned around! He’s not exactly used to seeing half-naked ladies — only in those dirty pamphlets that get traded around the Academy, and the women on those are thin and kind of flimsy-looking in retrospect. This girl is built like a brick house, like if he took a running tackle at her she wouldn’t budge. He’s uncomfortable that the thought of a body like that seems to be such a turn-on for him. He’d never considered before that a woman could be so _solid_.

He hears the tap running behind him, as well as her shuffling, making sure that his stance is blocking her from view of the entrance. He desperately tries to shake the idea from his mind that maybe she wanted him to look. She didn’t wait for him to turn around. But the look on her face didn’t seem particularly friendly and he knows, _knows_ , that it is more likely that she’s an awkward kid who doesn’t really understand boundaries. If he’s wrong and he’s just missed an opportunity, he’ll kick himself. But at least kicking himself seems like a safer option than turning around and letting her put those tidy muscles to use on his face.

The tap runs for barely two minutes before he hears it turn off again. She doesn’t mess around, apparently. He almost thinks they’re in the clear, until he hears stomping boots at the entrance. He stands a bit wider to make sure that she is hidden, before his knees buckle in fear when he sees the colonel storm into the communal dorm.

Her hair bounces as she approaches them, a scowl on her face. He stands to attention and salutes as soon as he gets the feeling back in his arms. She barely registers him, though, her glare directed behind him.

“Just what exactly is going on here?” she snaps, louder than necessary. An even, neutral voice answers her from behind him.

“Training exercises finished early, I was just washing up.” He can practically hear her straight posture, and has no doubt that whatever state of undress she’s currently in, she is not letting it affect her respectful stance.

Colonel Armstrong’s gaze focuses on him, and suddenly he feels like he’s shrinking. “And you?”

“Standing guard!” he replies loudly, barking like a well-trained dog. He doesn’t look her in the eye, but his stance remains as straight as he can make it.

He feels her gaze switching between him and the cadet behind him. Her stare settles back on her.

“And why couldn’t you wait until allocated wash-time this evening, Cadet?”

“I thought I would have more privacy—”

“Enough! Do you think that just because you’re a girl, you’re above washing with your comrades? Are you looking for special treatment?” There is an awkward silence as Hawkeye decides not to answer the question. The Colonel’s lip curls in disgust.

“Fine! If you wish to be treated like a little girl, so be it. You’re on KP duty for the rest of the day. Hurry up and finish dressing, report to the kitchen straight after.”

Havoc suppresses a scowl. After lunch is the beginning of shooting exercises, and if Hawkeye can’t make the first session, she’ll fall way behind learning the techniques. Tomorrow, they’ll give her a gun and just assume she knows how to use it. He should say something.

Armstrong glares at him, as if she can read his thoughts. “And you. Hurry up and finish whatever you came here to do, before I change my mind and put you on latrine duty.” With a whip of her hair, she exits, and Havoc waits for a few seconds before relaxing his shoulders and dropping his hand to his side.

He turns around when he’s sure Riza’s had enough time to put all of her clothes on. If she’s upset, her face doesn’t show it, with the possible exception of her jaw looking tighter than normal.

“Hawkeye… I’m sorry.” He mumbles. She doesn’t look up at him, instead electing to finish putting her things away.

“It’s not your fault. I have to go,” she begins to stomp towards the door, and he stands in front of her to stall her.

“Hey. It’s not your fault either,” he cracks a smile. “She’s just been out in the cold too long. I bet her heart is just a shard of ice by now.”

Her eyes widen at his joke, chastising him without words. “I have to go,” she repeats, side-stepping him. He turns in his place to watch her leave.

“Hey!” he calls after her. “I’ll help you catch up tomorrow if we’re in the same division!”

She doesn’t stop walking, but he can see her step falter for just a moment and her shoulders soften. Somehow, he knows he’s made her feel better. His chest swells with pride.

 

* * *

 

As he looks at the lineup of cadets getting ready to wash up, he realizes that there are no girls here. Hawkeye cleaned up earlier, but there are literally no other girls. It makes sense of course, the army has always been mostly men. But still, some girls join, and he bets that the trainees sent to the South, East and West all have more than one girl. He wonders if maybe they don’t put the girls up North because it’s a sucky place to be. He wonders if Hawkeye did something wrong to be here.

When he finishes toweling off, he goes to the bed to drop his bag. Hawkeye is already in her bed, pajamas on and under the covers. She is reading a copy of the first year handbook that they were given on the train on the way

“I’m not sure I even opened that,” he says as he turns his head to the side, shaking water out of his ears.

She lowers the book. “You should.”

He shrugs. “Pretty sure I left it on the train, actually.” He turns his head to the side, letting the water drain from his ear. “I wanted to talk to you at lunch, but you were busy and Armstrong was looking at me. How was KP duty?”

Her lip twitches and for a moment, Havoc holds his breath, suddenly desperately wishing for the twitch to blossom into a smile. It doesn’t. “The ovens were very warm.”

He clings to the information — maybe the most amount of words to come out of her mouth at once since he met her last night — trying to find a way to keep the conversation going. “Yeah? You’re lucky, the whole mess hall was freezing. And training afterwards was pretty boring. They taught us posture and how to disassemble and reassemble, but we haven’t taken shots yet.”

“More interesting than washing dishes at least.” She puts the handbook down on her lap and collects her legs until she is sat cross-legged on the bed. He looks at the empty space her action makes.

He knows it’s probably not a proposition of any kind, but for a moment his mind says _fuck it_ and he takes a chance, sits down on the mattress near the foot of her bed.

While the mattress sinks, everything seems to go in slow-motion, and for a moment he feels like it will keep sinking; pull him down into some abyss underneath the floorboards where he doesn’t have to look at that stony expression and wonder if he’s overstepped a boundary. When its give is gone and he is sitting sturdily, he almost wishes it would.

He clears his throat and tries to hide the fear he knows is written all over his face. “So how come I’ve never seen you at the academy?” he asks, as casually as he can, as if sitting on a girl’s bed is the most normal thing in the world and she shouldn’t read too much into it.

It works, to some extent. She doesn’t mention it, at least. “Different divisions, I guess.”

“Ha, yeah.” The academy is huge, and until cadets specialize, they are split up pretty indiscriminately into four or five groups. He’s met people in other groups, but he doesn’t train with them, so unless he meets them through friends or during breaks, he pretty much sticks with his own division. “I’m under Padina. He’s pretty tough. Who’s your superior?”

“Kingsley.”

“Oof,” is his response. He’s heard rumors about Kingsley, the word ‘psycho’ used to describe him more than once.

“He’s not so bad,” she mutters, but it doesn’t look like she quite believes that.

He sits at the end of the bed silently for another couple of minutes, unsure of what to say. He wants to keep the conversation going but he can’t think of a single interesting thing to say. She’s looking at him, but not expectantly, and while he’s feeling the increasing anxiety of the silence, the desperation to just say _something_ , he notices that she seems pretty calm about the whole thing. Like she’s used to the silence, like she doesn’t need conversation in her company.

One of the officers saves his ass when he comes in to tell them it’s lights-out. All the cadets scramble to their beds while Hawkeye puts the handbook in her lap into her bag.

“Well, goodnight I guess,” he mumbles, awkwardly getting up from her bed and climbing up the ladder.

“Goodnight.”

It’s silly really, but when he gets into his pajamas and crawls into bed, he stays awake for a few minutes in the dark, until he hears her steady breathing. He wonders just how badly she hurt herself last night, clawing at her back. He wonders if that’s why she didn’t turn around when she was washing herself this afternoon.

 

* * *

 

He’s damn good at shooting.

He’s fired a gun before, but that was only ever to scare the birds away from his mother’s shop front. The bolt-action in his hand is much more powerful, and the first time he shoots it he knows he is going to get a bruise on his collarbone, but it hits the target and he feels a rush of pride as the paper rips and the wood behind it splinters. He looks around and sees other cadets concentrating and pouting at the fruits of their labors. He grins.

He shoots a couple more rounds, and every time he stops to look around his eyes scan for short blonde hair. He wonders how she’s holding up, since she missed yesterday’s practice.

Eventually when they’re finished, he spots her. Head down, hood up, but definitely her. She’s carrying her target sheet and he rushes over before she has a chance to hand it in.

“Hey Hawkeye! How did you do?” he asks, and she looks up in surprise at her own name being called. She hands him the rolled-up sheet, and he’s a little disappointed that he handed his in already. His sheet was better than any of the trainees surrounding him, and he has the strange urge to impress her.

When he unrolls her target sheet, he’s suddenly relieved that he doesn’t have his to hand for comparison. Minuscule, overlapping holes perfectly remove the red dots that were once at the center of the head and heart. Not a single shot is out of place.

“ _Damn_ ,” he mutters, feeling an odd twinge of envy.

He looks back up at her and any ill feeling is lost in to her straight shoulders and a shine in her eyes that he hasn’t seen before. She’s proud of herself, and he’s suddenly captivated by her confidence. He smiles at her, cheeks stinging in the cold.

“You’re an ace shot,” he says enthusiastically rolling her target back up and handing it to her.

He hears the scuffling of footsteps surrounding them and realizes that everyone’s getting in line. He lifts his head and sees the Colonel approaching. He scurries into formation, until he is at the end of the line, Hawkeye beside him. He raises his hand to a salute and stands as straight as he can.

Her voice booms. “Shooting is finished for the day. By now you should have handed your guns and targets to your assigned commanding officers. You may all have enjoyed yourselves, but guns are not toys.” She clasps her hand behind her back, walking towards the far end of the lineup. “They need to be taken care of and they need to be used only when necessary. You must learn never to put your finger on the trigger unless you are willing to shoot.” She stands in front of the cadet at the start of the line. “Am I clear?” she asks him.

“Yes ma’am!” he barks.

She narrows her eyes, pausing for a moment. Then she steps to the next person in line “Am I clear?”

“Yes ma’am!”

She continues down the line and he sneaks a peek of Hawkeye from the corner of his eye. She is standing like a model soldier, but she still has her gun and target tucked under her arm.

_Am I clear?_

_Yes ma’am!_

He curses himself for having stopped her before she handed her gear in. If she gets in trouble again, she’ll be on this lady’s shit-list forever. If strike one is KP duty, what’s strike two?

_Am I clear?_

_Yes ma’am!_

Maybe he should just stay away from her. It seems like he’s fucking everything up, and she doesn’t seem like the type of person to take failure well.

_Am I clear?_

_Yes ma’am!_

Eventually the Colonel gets to Hawkeye and Havoc puts his eyes forward, suppressing a gulp.

“Am I clear?”

“ **Yes sir!** ”

Havoc almost chokes on nothing at all. He chances another look at Hawkeye, moving only his eyes.

The colonel’s expression is unreadable as she regards the cadet. Her eyes are narrow but piercing. Slowly, she takes a step towards Havoc and his entire body goes rigid. What does he do what does he do what does he do?

“Am I clear?” He’s never heard a more ominous voice before. It echoes through his head as his vision blurs and his arm aches from keeping it in a salute for so long.

 _Oh fuck it_.

“Yes sir!” he wheezes. It goes against his instincts, his head screaming that it’s fifty-something against one, but if anyone is going to defy the odds, it’s the girl with the perfect target score. He trusts her.

The colonel’s eyes narrow further and he’s almost sure he’s going to faint on the spot. She stands in front of him for what feels like eons, before she swivels in place to face both himself and Hawkeye. She plucks Hawkeye’s gun and sheet from her arms.

“You two,” she commands. “Go to lunch. The rest of you…” She snarls at the other cadets.

“Lieutenant Waters will take you to the training field for thirty laps. Maybe then you’ll learn how to address a superior officer properly.”

Havoc stays still for a moment as the colonel turns around, not quite able to relax out of his flinching posture. When the other cadets begin to shuffle away, he finally breathes a sigh of relief.

As he and Hawkeye march behind the colonel, he leans in slightly, bumping shoulders with her, and whispers just about loud enough for her to hear.

“I thought we were toast. How did you know what to say?”

Colonel Armstrong turns to the left as he and Hawkeye turn to the right, towards the mess hall. She bumps his shoulder back, an almost playful response to his nudge, and he hears the slightly teasing tone in her voice when she replies.

“You should really read the handbook, Cadet Havoc.”

 

* * *

 

When they sit down for lunch, he’s facing her on the other side of the table. The mess hall is still empty apart from the staff and some ranked officers.

“I feel bad for everyone else,” he mutters as he tries to chew as much meat off the cartilage as possible. “That lady’s stone cold.”

Hawkeye puts down her fork, swallowing the stew in her mouth. “You shouldn’t talk about her like that,” she scolds gently.

For a second, he’s terrified that the colonel is behind him and he swings around in a panic, before feeling a rush of relief when he doesn’t spot any tall blonde bombshell.

He turns back to the short blonde bombshell in front of him. “Don’t do that to me!”

Hawkeye sighs. “I _mean_ , she’s doing everything right. They should have known how to address her. And I shouldn’t have washed up outside of the assigned times.”

He scoffs. “You wanted privacy, she of all people should understand.”

“She of all people _does_ understand. I’m doing myself no favors by taking special treatment.” She picks up her fork and prods her food. “It’s going to be hard enough being a woman in the military, I don’t need people thinking my superiors are going easy on me.”

Havoc wrinkles his forehead. “Hey. I saw your score sheet. You’re great at what you do.”

She smiles sadly. “That won’t carry the same weight for me as it would for you.”

“Bullshit! Come on, you can’t argue with numbers.”

Her shoulders sag and she sighs. “Colonel Armstrong joined the academy the same year they first allowed women to enlist. Imagine how hard it would have been. Even now there are still high-ranking officers who don’t believe women should be in the army.”

Havoc allows himself the indulgence of trying to picture a young Armstrong. It’s not easy to think of her with puppy fat or a softer scorn, but it’s especially not easy to think of her going through drills over and over to prove herself to a bunch of guys who didn’t think she belonged there in the first place. He has guy friends, he’s been around young men enough to know how they think, how they talk. He knows enough about the leery and condescending terms they use in the name of banter. He’s joined in before, even.

“Shit,” is all he says.

Hawkeye nods and goes back to eating.

 

* * *

 

By the time they’ve finished up all of their exercises for the day, he’s practically racing to get back to his bunk. His muscles are tired and burning with the heat of use and the chill of the air, and he can’t wait to sit down for a bit.

He caught himself looking for her again, half-way through drills, trying to spot her in the crowd without falling out of step. He’s only seen implications of her abilities, her score sheets or early wrap-ups or her abs, and he had a taste for seeing her in action. But she wasn’t there, and he quickly got over it and carried on with his training.

When he gets to the bunk, he’s surprised to see it empty, but not overly-concerned. He figures she's probably using the can, and in any case she doesn't have to be there until lights out. This is their third night, she has no obligation to hang out at the bunk just because she did on the first two nights.

After he changes into bed clothes, she still hasn’t come to the bunk. Her handbook is on her pillow and he picks it up, flipping through it for a few minutes and idly reading about survival tactics. Heat conservation, using thin roots as rope, finding edible berries and mushrooms. Boy Scout shit, really. He puts her handbook back and climbs up to his own bed. He finds himself scanning the room, seeing if he can spot her talking to someone else. Nothing. He does catch Aiden’s eye though, and the young man waves him over with a smile. He waves back and gets out of bed, walking over to him.

“Hey Jean!” Aiden greets enthusiastically.

“What’s up? How are you liking it so far?”

Aiden heaves a dramatic sigh, scratching the back of his head. His sleeve slips down his arm, showing off the Xerxian script tattooed on his forearm. “I think I’m starting to get sick. This place is _so so cold_.”

“Heh. Yeah. How'd you like shooting?”

“It was pretty fun, yeah. You?”

Havoc smiles. “Yeah, I think I’m pretty okay at it,” he says nonchalantly, though he knows he’s better than okay.

“Cool!”

There’s a long stretch of silence as Jean tries to think of what to say. He wishes, not for the first time, that Breda were here, or that he was placed in Southern like Breda. Aiden’s good fun in context, but that context is usually with booze.

“So uh, listen,” says Aiden, dropping his voice. Havoc tries to suppress a frown, confused by the tone of voice, as if Aiden is about to share a secret. Belatedly, it occurs to Havoc that Aiden may not have beckoned him over to talk about training.

Aiden continues once he’s sure he has Havoc’s attention. “That girl you share bunks with…”

Havoc waits for an end to the sentence, but the silence stretches out. “Yeah?” he prompts.

“What’s her story?”

There’s a tone in his voice that makes the question pretty clear. “Oh,” he responds, somewhat surprised that he hasn’t gotten around to asking her that himself. “I don’t know, really. She keeps to herself mostly.”

Aiden gives Havoc a knowing grin. “You seem pretty friendly with her from what I’ve seen,” he intones.

Havoc scoffs a nervous laugh. “Nah. Honestly, she’s real quiet.”

Aiden raises an eyebrow. “Well if you’re not interested…”

“I didn’t say that,” Havoc replies, somewhat surprised by his own honesty. “Just…you know…”

“Swap bunks with me.”

Havoc’s eyes widen. “What? Why?”

“Why not? My bunk’s further from the door, it’s probably way warmer. And if you’re not gonna go for it, give someone else a chance.”

Havoc frowns at the excited cadet in front of him. He remembers his conversation with Hawkeye at lunch, about how being a woman in the military can be hard. He assumes a part of that difficulty comes from being hassled by horny young men. “Come on dude. That sounds pretty sketchy.”

Aiden rolls his eyes. “You get the prime spot in the whole place and you’re not going to use it to your advantage? What a waste.”

Havoc bristles at this, and he instinctively prepares to make a tasteless joke to reclaim some semblance of his manhood, but he bites his tongue. He’s not sure he wants to be part of that culture anymore. He really only makes racy jokes around certain guys, it’s part and parcel of the banter that sometimes goes down. But he’s not close with those guys and he realizes that he can probably live without them just fine.

Instead of giving voice to the joke on the tip of his tongue, he shrugs. “Word of advice, man: Stick to someone who isn't trained to kill.”

Aiden laughs, slapping Havoc on the back amicably. Havoc makes a mental note to talk to Breda about getting a new friend.

“What’s life without a little danger?” Aiden jokes with a wink.

Havoc returns the laughter but it sounds a little hollow. He’s saved from further conversation by another Cadet he doesn’t know who steals Aiden’s attention momentarily. He goes back to his bunk, and this time she’s there, jostling around on her bed with the covers tucked under her chin.

He stays a few steps away from the bed and averts his eyes. When he hears the shuffling stop, he looks at her again. She’s wearing her nightclothes and stuffing her coat into her bag.

“I was starting to worry about you,” he jokes, and the second the words leave his mouth he desperately hopes she _gets_ that he’s joking. “What happened? Late finishing drills?”

She shakes her head. “I was summoned to meet with Colonel Armstrong.”

His heart drops. “Are you in trouble again?”

She looks up at him, surprised by his concern. Her eyes are piercing, curious, and Havoc feels like she’s reading all of his memories and hopes and secrets. He feels open to her, waiting for her evaluation.

“She was teaching me how to waltz,” she says, in her quiet but steady voice. “Because there aren’t many women in the military, she said I would be expected to attend a lot of the functions.”

Havoc is relieved to hear that she’s not in the shit, but he’s a bit exhausted from all his little lessons in sexism today and he’s not sure how he’s supposed to feel about this new information. “Uh, is that a good or bad thing?”

She shrugs. “Neither, really. But it’s nice of her to teach me.”

He shrugs back. “Yeah, it’s good of her to look out for you I guess.” He thinks back to earlier, when the colonel took her target sheet and gun, and suddenly it hits him. “Wait! Hawkeye! That’s awesome!”

She hooks an eyebrow. “It’s kind, yes.”

“No no, don’t you see? Grunts don’t go to those kinds of things. She’s prepping you for the high class shit! She thinks you’re good enough to climb the ranks!”

For a second he swears — _swears —_ that he sees a tiny blush creep up her cheeks, but he blinks and her face is completely back to normal.

“You’re reading too much into it.” She’s still unnaturally quiet, but her tone is firm. Some part of him knows there’s no point arguing with her.

But he does smile knowingly. “Okay,” he concedes. “But if those functions have open bars, I got dibs as your plus-one.”

She rolls her eyes, which is altogether a much nicer reaction than he expected, though he's not sure she even picked up on the implication.

All too quickly, it’s lights out, and he’s reluctantly climbing the ladder to his bunk and settling in. Because she was late getting in, Havoc feels like his time was robbed. He likes the little conversations before bed, even if she isn’t the best conversationalist. Even if he kind of hated her a couple days ago. There’s something about her though, about those eyes. It’s like they know something important, and every time she looks at him without scowling, Havoc feels like he’s on the cusp of being let in on a wonderful secret.

“You have big eyes,” he says from his bed, as if she’ll understand, as if it’s very important that she be made aware.

“Yes,” she replies, because really, what else could she reply? It’s not a compliment or a question, it’s barely a coherent sentence.

Havoc squeezes his eyes shut and pulls the blanket over his mouth. _Idiot_.

 

* * *

 

He’s smoking outside the mess when she approaches. He doesn’t even see her coming, and in by terribly ill-fated coincidence, he exhales a thick plume of smoke at the exact time she steps directly in front of him.

“Oh shit, sorry!” He bats the air around them, trying to fan the smoke from her as he sees her face scrunch. She releases a single dainty cough.

He’s taken aback by the sound, a scrap of femininity that she can’t hide under thick clothes and hoods and fringes. For that split second she sounds so endearingly human that he almost releases a laugh. Instead he apologizes again.

“Have you already eaten?” she asks, recovering quickly.

“Oh, uh, no. I’m gonna head in when I’m finished this,” he explains, waving the half-finished cigarette a safe distance from her. She nods in acknowledgement, and leans against the wall beside him, looking out at the frozen grounds near one of the training pitches.

After a small stretch of silence, he shakes his head. “I’ll be honest, I kinda expected a lecture on how I shouldn’t be smoking,” he jokes.

She shrugs, still looking out at the empty grounds. “I assume you know the risks.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“It’s your decision in the end.”

When he finishes smoking and stubs the cigarette out with his boot, they both push themselves from the wall and walk inside. He feels that nervous energy again, something he’s become accustomed to around her. He realizes to his delight that this is the first time _she_ has approached _him_ , their first interaction that didn’t feel like he was infringing on her space. He tries not to read too much into that, not to get too excited.

He fails.

As they eat, he chats with her about his home, his mom, his sisters, anything he can think of. She nods and eats, but there’s something in her demeanor — maybe Havoc’s reading too deep into her waiting outside with him — that suggests they’ve gotten over a hurdle. That he has a shot at actually being friends with her, or at least friendly.

“Anyway, I think I was supposed to inherit the shop, so mom was pretty mad when I told her I was enlisting, you know? But we live close to the conflict, so military kept passing through, and I got talking to some of the soldiers and now…” He smiles, arms outstretched, as if he’s presenting himself. “Here I am.”

She hums in acknowledgement, and he’d be offended by the blasé response if it came from anyone else, but he’s just glad that she’s still facing him.

“Come on Riza,” he goads, and his eyes widen when he catches her scornful expression. Apparently they haven't gotten to first names yet. “Come on _Hawkeye_ ,” he amends. “You know lots about me now, tell me something about yourself.”

Hawkeye shrugs. “There isn’t much to tell.”

“I don’t believe that,” he replies. “You didn’t come out of your mom a cadet. There’s a story there!”

She winces at his admittedly rather rude remark. “It’s not an interesting story.”

“There has to be _something_ interesting though. Come _on_ ,” he whines. “Tell me something fun, something scandalous, tell me a secret. _Anything_.”

She goes quiet, looking down at the food on her plate. He can see the gears turning in her head, and suddenly a curtain of melancholy shrouds him just from looking at her. The shadows of the fringe against her forehead and the slightest jut of her lip and slouch of her shoulders paint the portrait of an exceptionally sad girl. Suddenly she looks smaller and far more delicate, like she could just blow away with a gust of wind. He would never admit it, but he feels almost afraid, like he is watching something terrible and can’t do anything about it, like he wants to protect her even though she clearly isn’t in any danger.

She looks up at him, squaring her jaw. “I’m sixteen,” she says quietly.

It takes him a while. His first thought is that she looks mature for her age, he wonders if the haircut makes her look older. His second thought is that her age doesn’t really count as personal info, and for a second he feels cheated. Only for a second. Then it clicks.

“ _What the shit_?” he hisses, as quietly as he can even though he wants to scream at her.

“Almost seventeen,” she says calmly, as if that excuses it, as if seventeen isn’t still a whole year too young to enlist. She looks back down at her meal and takes a bite of carrot.

“Hawkeye!” He wants to scold her, tell her _this is serious_ , but he can already hear her say _yes, I’m aware_. “How did you… What made you—” He swallows the gravel in his throat, eyes strained from trying to find the answers in her face. She really doesn’t look sixteen. _How can a child have such serious eyes?_

It’s just like her, really. He tells her he wants to know more about her, and she tells him something that makes everything he thought he knew irrelevant. He knows her _less_ now, has more questions than ever.

“Why?” he finally breathes.

She shrugs. “I have a duty. I didn’t want to wait.”

He’s pretty sure she’s a smart girl, that she didn’t see the ridiculous recruitment posters and decide she couldn’t stay away from the army for two years. Her answer seems honest, but he’s positive that her duty is not to her country. She has a purpose, one he’s sure she isn’t going to tell him about. Some higher calling that adds to the rigidity of her shoulders and the sadness in her eyes. He’s been trying to get some semblance of honesty out of her for days, as if seeing something genuine from her would be as beautiful as stars in the night sky. But now, Havoc feels like he’s staring at the sun, like he’ll be blinded if he doesn’t look away. There’s more to the story but to his shame, he realizes that he doesn’t want to know.

 

* * *

 

“You’d get along great with him, I’m telling you. He’s real smart and pretty quiet but good fun.”

“He sounds nice,” she placates.

“Oh God no, he’s a bastard.”

She exhales some approximation of a laugh, and he beams in return, in encouragement. He’s sitting on her bed again, both of them above the covers and cross-legged, pretty much as far away from each other as possible on the short single. There’s a thin book on her lap, folded out and facing down on the page she was reading before he arrived. The title is in another language. Cretan, judging by the accents on the vowels. He had tried to ask her about it but she just shrugged and said it was something to pass the time.

“So what about you? Have you made many friends in the academy?” he asks, trying to bring her into the conversation instead of just talking at her.

“My dorm-mate and I get on okay. She’s...persistent.” She doesn’t say it with any venom, but knowing what he knows about her, Havoc gets the impression that anyone Hawkeye would consider a friend has to navigate a lot of roadblocks before claiming the title.

“Well, I’d like to meet anyone you’d be willing to call ‘okay’,” he teases. Then, he clears his throat and lowers his voice. “Maybe when we get back to East, we could _all—_ ”

“Jean!”

Havoc spins his neck at the overly-enthusiastic tone. He sees Aiden approaching with a too-big smile on his face.

Aiden walks to the foot of the bed and claps Havoc on the back amicably. Havoc’s shoulders stiffen. “Hey Aiden.”

“I saw you shooting today, you were amazing! Honestly, I couldn’t believe how easy you made it look!”

Havoc smiles. He knows Aiden’s not here to talk about shooting, but he still feels his shoulders pull back a little at the compliment. “Thanks, man.”

Aiden shifts his gaze to Hawkeye, keeping the friendly smile but his expression seems a little darker. “Hey there,” he greets in a lower voice.

“Hello,” she replies. There’s no caution in the tone, nor is there friendliness. It is a Classic Hawkeye tone, as far as Havoc can tell what ‘Classic Hawkeye’ is.

There’s a long pause, before Aiden laughs. “Well obviously Jean’s forgotten his manners, so we’ll just have to introduce ourselves, won’t we?” He leans in, effectively cutting across Havoc, and offers his hand. “I’m Aiden.”

Hawkeye takes his hand - for a second Havoc feels betrayed, Aiden managed to get more physical contact from the girl than he has - and gives it a firm shake. “Cadet Hawkeye.” Havoc sees her turn his wrist in her grasp, and realizes that she’s probably checking out the tattoo on Aiden’s forearm.

Havoc can hear Aiden’s smile as he responds. “Pretty cool, huh?” Hawkeye shrugs but does not answer.

Aiden straightens again, and Havoc can see her easily once more. Her expression hasn’t changed. Havoc clears his throat. “You still feeling sick?” he asks Aiden, trying to put some real concern into his voice.

Aiden crinkles his brow for a second before shaking his head. “Nah, think I’m getting used to the cold. Still, can’t wait to get back to somewhere with above-freezing temperatures.”

Small-talk continues for a few minutes, with Aiden trying to coax Hawkeye into the conversations and Havoc trying to keep himself from being isolated and excluded. Hawkeye barely says more than two words, and it is painfully awkward for everyone involved.

“Well, I’m gonna get out of these wet clothes and ready for bed. Good talking to you Jean. Nice to meet you...uh… Cadet Hawkeye.”

Havoc watches Aiden leave until he is almost entirely out of his field-of-vision. He turns back to Hawkeye.

“Sorry about him,” he mumbles.

Hawkeye frowns. “Why?”

The question takes Havoc by surprise for a moment, until he replays the interaction in his head. Aiden hadn’t done anything untoward, in fact by all accounts he had a much better introduction to Hawkeye than Havoc did.

“Oh. Well, Aiden can be a bit…” Havoc doesn’t really know how to end the sentence. He briefly thought of letting her know about their conversation yesterday, about Aiden wanting to swap bunks to try it on with her, but he doesn’t want to be a snitch. More importantly, he doesn’t want to learn that she isn’t as against the idea as he'd like her to be.

It’s lights-out again, and all too soon he’s climbing up to his own bunk. He feels robbed again, and he tries not to get bitter over it. The little time between being herded into the sleeping quarters and lights-out is nice, but it isn’t Havoc’s to claim. She doesn’t owe him her undivided attention and time. Still, he thinks of Aiden shaking her hand, getting the opportunity for a pretty normal introduction with her. He thinks of her checking out the tattoo.

“I’m thinking of getting a tattoo,” he offers.

There’s a long silence and he thinks she might have gone to sleep already, before she breathes a quiet “oh?”

“Yeah. Something meaningful, you know? Maybe the date of when my dad died, or some sheet music from one of my favorite songs. Something I won’t regret.”

“Hm.” Her voice is strained, and Havoc gets the feeling she doesn’t want to be having this conversation. He thinks it’s probably because they’d get in trouble if they were caught talking past curfew. But their sleeping quarters is a glorified warehouse and no officer is going to haul ass all the way back to it in the freezing cold at night in order to check for a minor infringement. He can hear other cadets mumble among themselves too.

“What about you?” he goads. “What kind of tattoo would you get?” He tries to sound as casual as possible, but there’s a weight behind the question of the unasked, the “ _what is so important to you that you would keep it on your skin forever?_ ”

He still feels uncomfortable since lunch, even if he promised her he’d keep her secret. But he still wants to know about her. Not her circumstances or whatever terrible past she is guarding, but her hopes or her passions or _something_ that proves his theory that she is an extraordinary person. There’s something about her, some sort of benevolent kindness that she’s never really shown in her actions but that Havoc feels in his soul is there, dormant inside her.

The silence that follows is heavy, less like a consideration and more like a resistance to the question, and Havoc feels a shiver of anticipation creep up his spine.

Then, he hears a hum, not quite a scoff but something similar.

“I’d get something stupid.”

Havoc can’t help the sound that escapes him, a little bark of amused surprise. She’s constantly surprising him, he ponders. He swings his torso across the side of the bunk and looks down at her, as if he’s going to catch her in the middle of an authentic smile. It’s too dark to see her face, just her shape lying unassumingly beneath the covers.

“Something stupid,” he repeats.

“Why does everything have to be meaningful? It’s your body, even if it’s a mistake it’s your mistake.” He can hear the amusement in her voice and it’s making his heart thump almost painfully against his chest. “Get a dolphin, or barbed wire. Get 'Not all of me will die’ written on your arm in a dead language.”

He pauses, remembering Aiden’s Xerxian tattoo. “Is that what it says?” he asks, knowing she’ll understand the context.

She ignores him. “My point is, get whatever you feel like getting and don’t worry about attaching it to some moment in your life.”

Havoc hears shuffling beside him and instinctively swings back up and into his own bed. After a moment, when it’s obvious that nobody is about to bust in and reprimand them for talking, he relaxes.

“Something stupid…” he mumbles, letting his eyes drift closed. “You’re dumber than you look, Hawkeye.”

He feels a sudden jolt, as if he has been poked in the lower back.

“Hey!” he instinctively chides.

He feels it again, a gentle lift and fall of the mattress beneath him. She must be kicking him from under the bed.

“Knock it off!” he scolds, though there’s a chuckle in his tone.

Once more, he feels the prod, followed by an honest-to-goodness giggle. It’s soft but it’s unmistakably feminine, and he finds himself giggling in response.

 

* * *

 

Between shooting and running and crawling and push-ups, by the time he gets to his sleeping quarters he just wants to crawl into bed and get this whole day over with. Then he’ll only have to get through tomorrow and he’ll finally be in a warm, regular-height bed that doesn’t catch a draft of cold, dry air. He misses being around friends. He’s a pretty tactile person, and he hasn’t had any form of human contact besides a clap on the shoulder for five days. He hadn’t really thought about it until Aiden and Hawkeye shook hands yesterday, as if reminding him of his own involuntary isolation from human contact. He’s starting to feel lonely, he misses hugs from friends at the academy. He misses his mom and his sisters and his home.

He barely has the strength to climb the small ladder before he flops onto his bed. His clothes are wet so he begrudgingly removes them in favor of dry pajamas, but he feels little relief afterwards. He feels hot even though he knows it’s fucking freezing, and when he puts the blanket over himself and curls up on his side, he can feel his consciousness fade almost immediately.

After what feels like only a few seconds, he opens heavy eyelids. Everything is blurry, but his bunk-mate’s face slowly comes into view. Her head is peeking up, chin on the mattress.

“Hey,” he greets, voice scratchy and thick with sleep.

“You missed wash-up,” she says softly, turning her head so her cheek is resting on the mattress, sharp eyes evaluating him. He notices that her short hair is wet, sticking out at awkward angles.

“Did you have to wash with the guys?” She nods in response. “Ugh. Sorry.” He’s not sure why he’s apologizing, but he feels like he should have been there, should have tried to hide her from everyone’s line-of-sight. “I don’t feel great,” he admits.

Her hand comes up to press against his forehead and suddenly he’s a little more awake. She pushes his shaggy fringe back out of his face and for a second it feels like she’s stroking his hair. This is the first time he's felt her bare skin, and they’re practically nose-to-nose, even if no other part of her is on the bed. She must be standing on one of the rungs of the ladder. He feels a blush creep up his face as she looks him over with concern.

“You feel okay,” she decides, removing her hand. He stops himself from saying something stupid, like “ _thanks_ ” or “ _you too_ ”. Instead, he lets her continue. “It might just be fatigue.”

“Hopefully,” he says, throat still dry and scratchy. Her head suddenly ducks completely out of his view, before she re-emerges with a canteen of water. She hooks it on the post beside his head, making sure he’s watching her put it there.

“Get some rest. It’d be embarrassing if you died of pneumonia on the last day.”

He wheezes a little laugh. “That’s funny. You’re funny, Hawkeye.” He can see her turn her head, hiding a smile, but he doesn’t have the strength to try and get her to face him with it. He takes comfort in knowing it’s there, though.

He doesn’t wait for her to climb down into her own bed, instead he just closes his eyes and lets the exhaustion claim him.

In the middle of the night, he wakes up parched and chugs the canteen of water beside him. The delirious part of his mind remarks that she may have put her lips to this same canteen before, and he shakes off the thought. He must be getting pretty desperate for human contact if he’s trying to orchestrate a second-hand kiss in his mind.

Still, it was nice of her to look out for him like that, to anticipate a need before he knew he needed it. He doesn’t know if she considers him a friend or an acquaintance or a temporary annoyance. He doesn’t know what _he_ considers _her_ to be either, but he knows that he sure as hell likes her.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes, he feels a lot better. Good enough at least to not skip drills. He shoots and he is getting marginally better at it, more comfortable with the weight of a rifle. He is finding its place snuggled in the crook of his elbow, making room for it.

He does drills too, and they’re surprisingly easy. North is known for having a crazy-difficult last day, stories get told to first years all the time of survival training and obstacle courses with walls the size of mountains and crawl-spaces the size of rat holes. Every year a new story gets added — apparently they like to switch it up so nobody comes prepared. When he was first told he was assigned training in the North, Breda laughed his ass off.

But after being on-edge all day, drills finish and training is over. By tomorrow afternoon, they’ll be on a train home.

He walks into his sleeping quarters, clothes wet from snow and sweat, and walks towards his bunk. Hawkeye is there, standing by the bed, a solemn look on her face.

“What’s eating you?” he asks as he throws his hand up to get his bag from the foot of his bed. Feeling around, his hand never feels an interruption in the smooth blanket and his movements become frantic until he turns around and stands on his tiptoes to see into his bed. No bag, just his military-quality neat bed, with the too-thin dark green blanket.

“What the—”

He looks around, seeing and hearing the panic of all the other cadets in the place as they scramble to look for their bags. He turns back to Hawkeye.

“Have we been robbed?”

She shakes her head and points at the bedpost. There, right below the names 'HAVOC’ and 'HAWKEYE’ is a note pinned to the wood. He tears it from its pin and brings it close to his face, muttering the words aloud as he reads.

“Soldiers are to be prepared for any inevitability, and adapt to survive. Loss of supplies is common on the battlefield and scarcity is particularly common in the North.” He looks at Hawkeye again, horrified. “They took our stuff!”

She just nods.

“ _We’ll freeze!_ ” His pajamas were in that bag, and his clothes are soaked through. Everyone’s are, the fields weren’t cleared of snow today. He already feels the cold seeping into his bones.

Hawkeye doesn’t respond, just climbs into her bed, rustling under the sheets until she has her clothes off. Without a bag to throw them into, she keeps the blanket tight around her body and hangs her clothes off the end of the bed. Her skin is practically blue.

Everyone has more or less the same idea, stripping down to their underwear and beyond and climbing into bed. He follows suit, but the second the blanket is wrapped around him, he knows it’s not going to be enough.

“For fuck’s sake!” he hears someone mutter a few beds down, before there is some shuffling. “Back to back! No way I’m sleeping with your dick near me.”

 _Heat management_ , Havoc realizes, remembering the short extract he read in Hawkeye’s handbook a few days ago. Without clothes or a fire, the best way to survive is to share body heat. Other cadets wizen to the idea too, climbing up and down until they are sharing a bed with their bunk-mates, their complaints and caveats filling the room.

“Hey Jean, you wanna reconsider switching bunks?” he hears Aiden shout from the other side of the room. Then he catches more than one person mumble “lucky bastard.”

He’s suddenly painfully aware of his own nudity, of the fact that he didn’t get the chance to wash up yesterday. He’s trying not to picture the body beneath him, the body he’s going to…

Well, he could not have come up with a better scenario, really.

He tries to hide the excitement in his voice. “So, uh...how do you wanna do this? Do you wanna come up here or should I go down there or what?” His mind plays like a film, images of the awkward shuffling and sharing of blankets. Of the warmth radiating from each other, so inviting and promising, until they can’t help but move closer. Of turning in the middle of the night and wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her close and soaking in her body heat. Of her not stopping him because it feels too nice to pass up…

“Neither.”

The images in his head practically screech to a halt. “What do you mean, neither?”

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

He frowns, and even the flush of his cheeks at feeling like he's been 'caught' does little to warm him. “Grow up, Hawkeye! It’s for survival!”

“It’s not happening.”

“We’ll freeze to death!” he practically screeches.

“I’m willing to take that risk.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but can’t think of anything more pressing to add than the fact that they could literally die. Instead he huffs through his nose, seeing the clouds of his breath, and buries himself further into his blanket. He listens to all the other cadets grumbling and making dumb remarks about not being gay. He envies them and their shared heat and their not-completely-impossible bunk-mates.

“You're a fucking robot.” His voice is venomous, but still shaky from the cold. “Why can’t you just accept help, huh?”

She doesn’t answer.

The longer he shivers in the cold, the angrier he gets. He really thought they could be friends, he and Hawkeye. He had already been excited to tell Breda about her, to look her up once they got home and maybe ask her if she was seeing anyone. Now, if he gets through tonight, he’s not sure he ever wants to see her again. He’s been jumping through hoops trying to gain her affection, or her trust, or just to get a smile out of her. Now it seems like she’d rather die than be anywhere near him. Sure, he would have tried to enjoy the situation, but he wasn’t going to do anything that made her uncomfortable. He’s not a bad guy, it shouldn’t be this hard.

Sleep doesn’t come easily, the cold keeps dragging him to full consciousness. He considers making another dig at her, hurling an insult or two just so she knows how annoyed he is with her. But he decides he doesn’t want to waste the warm breath in his lungs. She’s likely awake too, but she doesn’t make a sound, because of course she doesn't. She's just content to suffer in silence despite there being an easy way to prevent suffering in the first place.

Eventually the exhaustion gets a few minutes respite from the cold and he is able to settle down fully to sleep.

When he wakes up, he sees a familiar head of blonde hair poking out from beside his bunk. It takes him a moment to realize the severity of seeing it.

He springs to sit upright, his stiff, cold muscles screaming in protest.

“Sir!” he barks, suddenly unsure of what to do. He should be standing to attention at the foot of his bed, but he’s completely naked and he’s not sure she’ll appreciate that.

She looks up at him, a snarl on her face. “At ease.” She looks down again, at the names written at the foot of the bed.

“Havoc and Hawkeye,” she reads aloud. She looks into Hawkeye’s bunk. “The fact that I know your names now is not a good sign for either of you. Why is it whenever there’s been a problem all week, you’ve both been in the middle of it?”

“I'm unaware of any problem, sir,” Hawkeye responds, her voice calm and even.

“Don’t play dumb with me, little girl,” Armstrong spits. “You are aware that last night’s drill was to act with intent of survival by any means necessary, yes?”

“Yes sir!”

“Then why didn’t you run a heat-maintenance measure?”

“Because it wasn’t necessary, sir.”

The Colonel’s eyes widen and for a second Havoc is worried that she’s going to snap back at Hawkeye for insubordination. But even though she looks taken aback, the anger drains from her face. She quickly recovers, and looks up at Havoc with a hard stare.

“And you?”

Havoc represses a shrug. He doesn’t particularly want to be killed in a frozen wasteland miles from home. “She didn’t want to.”

He’s surprised her, he can tell. And for a second, her lips quirk into a smirk, not quite kind but not malicious either. Havoc reckons he may have impressed her, but the pride of the moment is lost in the fact that he’s still naked and shivering.

She turns around and raises her voice. “Everyone wake up!” There are a few sleepy moments of Cadets huddled together and waking up. Havoc almost laughs at the panic on some of their faces as they scramble to sit up and salute, trying to ignore their one-night bedmates beside them. “Your bags are outside, collect them, get dressed and get in formation.” With that, she marches out the door. Havoc can see shadows blocking the light of the door before a few sets of footsteps retreat. Likely other officers, waiting to take the young trainees home.

Everyone is slow to get up, the awkwardness of nudity in daylight coupled with the awkwardness of sharing beds with comrades making many reluctant to be the first to move, to let the reality of the situation seep in.

Hawkeye emerges from beneath him in yesterday’s clothes, still darkened with damp. She wordlessly steps outside. Other Cadets soon follow, either putting on yesterday’s clothes or wrapping the blankets around their bodies. The shuffling sounds get louder as the trainees search for and return with their bags.

Havoc melts back into the bed, pulling the blankets up until they are under his eyes. He tries to tell his body to move, to get up, but the idea of his bare feet against the icy floor paralyses him. He is so cold he feels numb, and he fears the slightest extra movement will create a tiny opening in the blanket wrapped around him and the cold air will cut him like a knife.

When he sees Hawkeye return, he sees she has two bags, hers and his. She throws the bag at his feet and walks on, away from the bunk. He moves his head to follow her and sees her stood at the sinks. Her back is to him, but he hears the hiss of water and sees steam rising above her shoulders. When she returns, she climbs on the ladder.

He glares at her when her face comes into view. He’s still pretty mad that she basically chose almost-death instead of sleeping in the same bed as him. She doesn’t shrivel from his expression and he doesn’t really expect her to.

Then, he feels a radiation of warmth, delicious warmth, flooding across his stomach. It startles him, almost burns him, and when he looks down in shock, he sees her pressing her sheepskin canteen onto the blanket at his middle.

He curls reflexively around it and she withdraws her hand before he traps it between his stomach and legs. When he looks up at her again, she is studying his face intensely.

Then, her face cracks open, crosses the barrier he’s been dying to see all week. She beams at him, a genuine and bright smile. For a moment, the light streaming through the open door illuminates her face — her flushed cheeks and pink nose, her cracked lips and eyes watering from the wind — and she seems otherworldly.

“Thank you,” she whispers, small puffs of steam escaping her lips.

He opens his mouth but his breath is caught in his throat. Before he can recover, she is climbing off the ladder.

He stays like that for a while, slowly regaining the feeling in his legs and arms and, yes, his more sensitive parts too. When he finally feels warm enough to move, he sits up and reaches for his bag. Finding some dry clothes, he dresses from beneath the blankets. Undershirt, shirt, wool jumper, underwear, trousers and two pairs of socks. When he’s dressed, he’s not exactly warm, but he does feel remotely human again.

Once all his gear is packed, he swings his legs off the bed and jumps down. He turns around and her bed is empty, bag gone. She must be outside again already. Her bed is perfectly made, as if she were never there. Pinned to the frame is her name below his. The sheepskin canteen is still warm.

He isn’t sure why, but he takes the little piece of paper with 'HAVOC’ written right above 'HAWKEYE’, and stuffs it into his pocket.

When he’s outside, he has no time to look for her, so he just gets in line. The parting words from the colonel are no doubt laced with insults or disappointment in the group’s performance, but he’s not listening. _That girl_ … She could get away with anything if she smiled afterwards, he decides. Every ounce of anger that joined him in his sleep is gone, forgotten about. Every less-than-friendly interaction is wiped clean, replaced by the image of her smile.

As they separate into groups and shuffle towards the train station, he decides that he has to see her again. The canteen will be an excuse at least. But she knows something, something bigger than him or even herself. He still isn’t sure he’s ready to know, but what he does know is whatever her plans are, he wants to be there too, to be part of whatever wonderful, important thing is in store for her.

When he’s on the train, he walks up and down the carriages looking for her. He eventually finds her in a corner seat, curled up and resting her head against the window. Her bag is on the seat opposite her, and he considers moving it to face her, but he finds one last bout of courage inside him and goes with it.

He settles beside her.

Her head doesn’t move, but her shoulders tense for a moment, before relaxing. He rifles through his bag until he finds her canteen and drops it into her lap. Her arms curl around it and she looks down at it, a thoughtful expression on her face.

“Thanks,” she mumbles eventually.

“It’s probably ruined now,” he says apologetically. He imagines the coppery taste of hot water will never rinse completely from the sheepskin.

She shifts in her seat until she is twisted to face him. For a moment, neither of them speak. He gets lost again in the intensity of her eyes, how they evaluate every aspect of his face. He almost looks away from embarrassment, but he holds strong, even if he can feel the heat of a blush creeping across his cheeks.

Her eyes soften. “Are you looking forward to seeing your friend again?”

He tries not to smile too widely. “Yeah.”

They chat for a little while, about Breda and classes and drills. She doesn’t say much but she seems comfortable to let him talk.

At one point, a slight bump on the tracks makes the train move unpredictably, and her knee brushes against his hip, pushing against the folded up paper in his pocket.

 

* * *

 

His palms are slicked with sweat as he gestures towards his friend, introducing them with a slight shake to his voice. The bar is pretty quiet, it’s only a special occasion for him, it seems.

Breda nods in acknowledgement of her before turning to order a drink, a gesture that may be considered rude to anyone else, but Havoc’s learned in the past few weeks that she’s not easily offended.

When Breda gets his beer, his eyes scan her again.

“Your grandma dress you?” he gruffs at her. Havoc balks, almost shoving his friend for making _that_ the first thing he said to her.

Riza — he’s finally worked up the courage to call her _Riza_ now — looks down at her outfit. In fairness, it is a bit… frumpy. Loose pants and a cardigan buttoned up to her chin. Not exactly night-on-the-town material.

She just shrugs. “It’s comfortable.”

Breda scoffs. “You look like you’re going to a seminar on soil.”

“ _You_ look like this is the longest conversation you’ve ever had with a woman.”

There’s a heavy silence in the too-empty bar as Havoc looks between his two friends in horror. He had worried that they wouldn’t get along, but he assumed they’d at least be polite to each other and save their jabs for when they weren’t in each other’s company. He didn’t expect their first conversation would end in them sizing each other up, as if they were each other’s natural predators.

Eventually, Breda’s scowl turns into a lopsided grin.

“I like you,” he admits with narrowed eyes and a sharp nod.

Havoc only remembers to breathe again when Riza grins back.

 

* * *

 

He knocks again, louder, even though he knows she heard the first knock. The door rattles under his fists. “Hawkeye, open up.” Another bout of knocking. “Riza!” his voice is sharp and loud. He’s not afraid to make a scene.

Rebecca answers. She does not look impressed. She raises her finger at Jean like an angry teacher. “No. No! This is my last night with her and I will _not_ have you upsetting her.” She punctuates every second syllable with a stab of her finger through the air.

“Let me in,” he growls. He tries to move past her but her hand comes up to push on his chest.

“ _No_!”

“Come on Becca,” comes Breda’s voice from behind Havoc. “Let us say goodbye at least.”

Riza appears behind Rebecca, looking sheepish and reluctant to pull her friend away from the door. Havoc cranes his neck to look at her. She doesn’t make eye contact.

Rebecca points at Havoc. “ _He_ isn’t going to just say goodbye! He’s just gonna get mad at her and bum her out.” Her voice gets more and more shrill with each syllable. “You both had your goodbyes yesterday, leave us alone!”

“Rebecca…” Riza begins.

“ _No_! No no no _no_! You don’t need this shit on your last night, it’s not fair!”

Breda scoffs. “Nothing about this is fair. For fuck’s sake, they’re about to send a nineteen year old to Ishval.”

“No.”

This time the declaration doesn’t come from Rebecca, but Havoc. Because holy shit, _no._ They’re _not_ sending a nineteen year old to Ishval. They’re sending a seventeen year old.

Havoc spins on his heel and walks hurriedly down the hall. He barely registers his name being called — first by Breda, then Riza.

He turns the corner and continues his heavy-footed march. His focus narrows completely on the door at the end of the hall. Kingsley’s office, her superior officer. Havoc sees yellow light spill from under the door. He’s not too late.

“Jean.”

He skids to a halt and turns around. She’s a few steps behind him and her tone is soft but firm.

“You promised.”

He clenches his fists. “So fucking what? You shouldn’t even be _here,_ let alone a war zone!”

She doesn’t meet his anger. Instead, she takes another step towards him, slow and fluid.

“We're soldiers. Soldiers go to war.”

“We're _students_! I’m ending this now, I’m not going to let you die alone in the middle of the desert!”

“I’m not going to be alone.”

He’d much rather she tell him that she’s not going to die. “You know what I mean!” He feels hot angry tears slide down his face as he looks at her unchanging expression. She looks resigned to her fate, she’s always so fucking accepting of whatever shit happens to her, as if she is made to suffer. Everything about it is unfair and wrong and _fuck_ , he’d rather she get kicked out of the army than find out that she’s dead from some prick reading out the Roll of Honor.

He spins around again to approach the door, and this time she doesn’t stop him.

He raises his hand but it hangs in the air. He clenches his fist so tight his nails are digging into his palms. Just a couple of centimeters and he’ll be touching the wood. His arm trembles. He tries to gather his resolve; he made a promise, but he _can_ break it. If it saves her life, he can betray her trust.

His arm flops to his side and he suppresses a scream. He’s so weak. He can’t even do this one thing. She’s going to get killed and he can’t do anything to help. He releases a single shuddering sob and hangs his head.

When he turns around again she’s there, leaning against the wall a few feet from him. Her eyes are fixed on him with the same severity and evaluation that he’s come to expect from her. Tomorrow, she’ll be shipped out and she’ll be using those eyes on a scope. She’s good, the best he’s ever seen, and he hopes desperately that that will be enough.

He steps away from the door and gravitates towards her. She doesn’t move but her eyes follow him.

“Why?” he can barely get the word out, and he hopes she’ll know what it means. _Why are you here? Why did you join in the first place?_ He hadn’t wanted to know before, but he needs to know now. He needs something to tell him he’s made the right decision.

Her eyes shine in understanding. “I… I have something I need to do. There’s nothing for me here.”

" _We've_ been here!" he wants to take her by the shoulders and shake her. He wants to take her hand and never let go. "Why aren't we enough?"  
  
She smiles that sad little smile that hints at a past she'll never reveal to him. Every time he sees it, he wants to look away, heartbroken by the intensity of her endurance with whatever shadows chase her.  
  
"I'll miss you," she offers quietly. She wraps her arms around his waist and rests her cheek against his shoulder.

It’s their first hug, he's been dying for this kind of contact from her almost since he's met her. But even as he feels her chest rise and fall against his, he’s never felt further from her.  
  
He can taste the tears streaming down his face. There’s nothing he can do. She has her mind made up, and he’s never known her to take any decision lightly. She had plans before she was ever in his life, something driving her forward to somewhere he could never be able to follow. He had all these grand ideas mapped out; graduate together, get assigned together, follow her along whatever destiny has in store for her because he _knows_ she’s going to do great things. But even though he’d written himself into her future, she never intended to make room for him. She has never been his to protect. And now she might never get to do anything great because she’s going to die in a war zone.

"Riza..." he chokes into her hair. But there is nothing else to say.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t really mean to aggravate a room full of people. If Breda had been with him, he’d have smacked him in the back of the head. But it’s kind of a sensitive subject for him, so when he hears a ton of men drinking and toasting “The Hero of Ishval”, he can’t help but release a snort. He thinks for a moment that he’s far enough away that they won’t hear, but then suddenly men are standing up and yelling at him for disrespecting a veteran.

He only came here because he heard the soldiers were returning, and that this would be their first stop. He bought a drink and asked around about her. She’d stopped writing towards the end of the war and even though he knows writing supplies were low, he needed to find out if she was okay. He learned that she has a dope new nickname, and that she’s alive, but was injured towards the end of the war. Apparently she’s been put on bed rest to recover. Nobody could tell him _where_ she was recovering, how badly she was injured or even what happened to her apart from the fact that the injury has ‘limited her mobility’. He desperately tries to shake the images of blown-off limbs or broken spines from his thoughts.

But now he’s surrounded by angry, scruffy men closing in on his perch by the bar, griping about disrespect and war heroes. He can’t really summon the energy to care.

“Leave him alone, boys.” The infamous Hero of Ishval parses through the angry crowd and sits beside Havoc. One stern look and the men all disperse, going back to their seats. Havoc stares at his glass.

The dark-haired man motions to the bartender, and requests “two more of those”, pointing to Havoc’s glass.

“Sorry,” Havoc gruffs, although his tone doesn’t match his words.

“It’s okay. I’m not a fan of the name myself.” The man turns towards him and extends a hand. “Roy Mustang.”

He considers not returning the gesture, but the guy did just order him a drink and diffuse a mob, so he takes his hand and shakes it. “Jean Havoc.”

“So, Jean. Are you military?” Havoc nods. “Fresh from the academy I bet.” Another nod. “And your specialty?”

“Shootin’.”

“Ah, interesting. Have you been assigned a commanding officer yet?”

Havoc eyes him warily. “No.”

Roy Mustang chuckles at Havoc’s expression. “Relax, I’m not making an offer.”

The drinks arrive, and conversation flows. There’s an easy charm to Mustang, and the drinks keep coming until Havoc’s head is swimming and his words are slurring. He begins bragging a little, as men are wont to do. He tells Roy that his target sheet was the best of his graduating class. He omits the fact that it wouldn’t be if his whole class graduated together. Mustang brags too, about being the youngest State Alchemist in history.

Even after a couple of hours of talking to him, Havoc feels like he hasn’t learned a single thing about the man. It reminds him of someone else he knows, but with a vastly different approach. Whereas she is closed-off and silent, Roy Mustang is chatty and able to talk around giving any actual information. Havoc feels like they’re becoming fast friends, even though the most personal information he knows is that the man drinks whiskey and fought in Ishval.

 _Ishval_ …

He should really get back to the barracks. Find Breda and Rebecca and let them know Riza’s alive. Breda would know how to look her up, or Rebecca might have some clue as to where she’s gone. Maybe she’s even in the barracks.

As if reading his mind, Mustang sighs. “I told myself I wouldn’t be out this late. I really just wanted to get out of here early and sleep in a real bed.”

Havoc grunts. “Ishval must have been hard,” he acknowledges, because it’s true. “Still, must be nice to come back with a heroic title. ‘ _The Hero of Ishval_.’” Havoc doesn’t even try to hide the resentment in his voice. “What did you do to earn it?”

Mustang doesn’t answer, just looks down at the drink in his hand, swirling the liquid.

Havoc shouldn’t press, he knows, so he tries again. “What does the military have planned for you now?”

Mustang smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m being promoted. Lieutenant-Colonel. I’m building a team soon, hopefully finding people that will follow me to th- that will follow me.” He takes a swig of his drink.

Havoc’s had enough alcohol to take the chance. “And why should I follow you?”

Mustang laughs. “Easy there, I never asked you to.”

“Okay, but if you did. If you wanted me to join your unit, what would be in it for me?”

Mustang swallows audibly, all traces of the charming and suave man from before gone. He looks up at Havoc again and Havoc holds his breath, he’s seen those kind of eyes before. Eyes with a past and with pain and through it all, the shine of resilience. Certainty.

When Mustang speaks again, he is much quieter. “I’m going to be Führer,” he confesses. “And when I am, Ishval will never happen again.”

Havoc isn’t sure what he was expecting, but that definitely wasn’t it. He’s shocked at the blatant expression, talk like that could get the man arrested. And Havoc’s pretty much a stranger, he shouldn’t be let privy to something like that.

But his chest swells with a sense of purpose that he hasn’t felt since she left. He trusts this man, or trusts that he’s telling the truth, at least. Roy Mustang is going to do something great. He has plans. And he’s going to do what Havoc never could; protect those that needed it.

Havoc raises his glass in a mock-toast. “I’m in.”

Mustang scoffs. “I _still_ haven’t made any offers.” There’s a teasing tone to his voice though, they both know how this plays out.

Havoc grins, happy to play along. “When the request comes through, I promise I’ll act surprised.”

Mustang laughs, genuine and hearty, and Havoc laughs with him. They finish their drinks in a companionable silence, everything necessary having already been said.

**Author's Note:**

> Good job making it to the end! I'm on Tumblr [here](https://1st-time-caller.tumblr.com/), where my posts tend to be far shorter than this monstrosity.


End file.
